Born in Washington, D.C. in 1946, Tobey C. Anderson grew up in Iowa. In 1969 he immigrated to Ontario and settled in Kingston where he spent a decade of artistic activity and employment in the Visual Arts Department at St. Lawrence College. He became a Canadian Citizen in 1975.

Tobey C. Anderson has been exhibiting his work since 1969. He is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, most recently an Ontario Arts Council Mid-Career Artists Grant (2007), and he is represented in private and public collections. In 2000-01 his labyrinths project was exhibited at Niagara Artists’ Company, St. Catharines and Bierkart, Peterborough, and in 2003 he was commissioned to produce a large painting installation for the Kirkwood Community College Foundation in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He is currently working on and touring a significant body of new work, The New American Century Project.

In the late 1970’s Anderson was Founding President of Kingston Artists’ Association / Modern Fuel Artist-run Centre and at the same time was President of Artspace, Peterborough with other notables in the provincial and national artist-run network. In the 1980’s Anderson returned for a hiatus in the U.S. with his family. He lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and in San Diego, California before settling back in Canada in St. Catharines, the Garden City of Niagara, in 1990.

Tobey Anderson now

Most recently, Anderson was Director of Niagara Artists’ Centre from 1990-98 before retiring to work as a full-time artist. He is actively involved in cultural developments in Niagara and served as the inaugural Chair of the Culture Committee following his involvement in the development and adoption of a new Cultural Policy for the City of St. Catharines. In 2005 Tobey was the recipient of the Mayor’s Trillium Award for Artistic Excellence and in 2006 he established gallerie CRAM collective that features contemporary artists with strong ties to St. Catharines.